An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.

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Neil Young is the only artist in the history of modern recording to be sued for refusing to be himself. The suit, filed by Geffen Records, Young’s label for much of the Eighties, charged that he was violating his contract by recording ‘unrepresentative’ albums. In other words, Neil Young wasn’t making Neil Young music.

The problem with Geffen’s suit was that there has never been any such thing as a ‘representative’ Neil Young album. Young has made a decades-long career out of keeping his fans guessing what he’ll do next.

Even before he signed with Geffen, his ever-changing style included raw and edgy, melodic and romantic, dark and melancholic, acoustic and electric, and introspective and retrospective, with a bit of punk thrown in for good measure, all backed by whatever band he’d assembled at the time. It’s just how he worked (and still does).

This post explores how Young has managed to maintain an ongoing state of creative flow throughout his career. Even when he was creating to order for a record company, and even during the litigation that ensued.

As we’ll see, he did so by mastering the art of self-renewal, which is something we can all learn to do.

Now we often are accused of over analyzing things to which we plead guilty.

That said tho, if you want some serious analysis of what makes Neil's creative muse tick, then check this blog on Lateral Action. (Thanks Peter!)

I totally understand the Geffen suit against Neil. The music industry is a "risky business" and one of the cash cows was milking the farmer for advances. A cow that can't deliver the milk she promised is gonna piss off the farmer sooner or later. Was the suit justified? Well I bet that farmer is gonna change the way he does business with his cows in the future. On the orher hand, Geffen did retract the lawsuit in the end... And Neil got a short-lived acting career and an apology from David.

I love David Geffen for many reasons. One, Double Fantasy. Two, Leonard Peltier (all you goddamn racists who didn't lift a finger to help that man but your okay about making money off his brand of people...). Three, AIDs research.